Rogers World Elite Mastercard getting worse starting June 2, 2020 | Page 2 | Credit card reward programs | Discussion forum

Save2Retire@55 said
Ok. After lots of research, I think the winner is Meridian Visa Infinite. ...... 

I thought so too, but cancelled it soon after acquiring it.

The Meridian card, like those of many credit unions, is administered by Cambria, which has the worst customer service possible, with ill informed and apathetic CSR's.

In addition the rewards program is administered separately by a U.S. company that requires a separate login process, and to make matters worse requires a lengthy lead time (30 days if I remember correctly) to redeem cashback.

This can set up a situation which can force you to have to pay for another year's subscription fee for the card in order to protect and retrieve your cashback.

There may also be a minimum cashback redemption, but I'm not sure.

Stephen

Nehpets said
I thought so too, but cancelled it soon after acquiring it.
.... a separate login process, and to make matters worse requires a lengthy lead time (30 days if I remember correctly) to redeem cashback.
Stephen  

Thanks, Stephen! This sucks. I am not sure what other options we might have. Good that first year is free so I can do a free test. I have never had a paid CC ever but seems I am out of options this time. "Missing Chase Amazon Visa Card".

I thought of Brim too but the one with insurance is $199. That's too much for a CC. Their $99 one has only 8 days Travel Insurance (Out of province) which defeats the purpose and honestly not comparable with Meridian's 48 days. Sadly Meridian is like Rogers giving 3% but taking 2.5% back. Technically it is less than 0.05% for foreign transactions.

Cancelling mine once I redeemed all my cash rewards. No point retaining this card. With the nerfed reward %, the card would be the same as Capital One and CIBC Visa Dividend cash and even worse than Amex cash which actually pays 1.25% (once you find a merchant that accepts AMEX). And Capital One has no limit on how much cash reward you can spend and you can redeem the cash reward at any time by even receiving a cheque that you can deposit to your bank account to earn interest on unlike Rogers that you have wait until statement period and can only redeem if it's min. $20 with the credit only applicable towards statement or outstanding purchases. Good thing I kept my Capital One.

Signing up for this card right from the start was a major pain in the a$$. Had to go to a Rogers store and wait for 2 hours to just get my identity confirmed on the phone with a rep when with any other cards, you get everything even an approval confirmed right on the spot after you apply online. Should've been a sign that this card is not worth it and cancel it right there and then. And then the additional user on my Rogers card couldn't even use the card even after I activated the card and set the pin after finally getting the card in the mail. The card kept getting declined after the merchant tried it 2 times. Called Rogers and the idiot on the phone lied to me saying it's the merchant's terminal that couldn't connect to the network and as a security feature they locked the pin and yet they could see exactly the transaction so if the merchant didn't even connect to the network how could they have seen the transaction? Had to call Rogers back and talked to a second guy and they finally admitted that the card wasn't even activated and they just activated the card now and we still have to reset the pin and for the next 3 transactions, the card would still be declined and the merchant has to try up to THREE times to pass the card in order that the pin can sync with the chip. Only Rogers card has ever given this problem. Have been using cc's for 20+ years now and never had this problem with any cards no matter how crappy they are.

Even with the 1.25% cash back, I didn't even think it's worth it to go thru these kind of trouble. Now with the nerfed reward, there is absolutely no incentive in keeping this card. I dunno what Rogers is thinking. The only reason why we go thru all these trouble to get their card is for the additional 0.25% otherwise we can get the same reward even with better terms elsewhere else. WHY would we ever want to waste our time and energy with them? Had nothing but trouble with Rogers. Used to have cable service with them and it was a pain as well. Charged me an arm & a leg with speed slow as hell, barely faster than dial-up and whenever you call them, they always blamed it on my neighbours saying because it's a shared connection LOL. And then when it was time to cancel the service to return their cable modem, they would take forever to arrive to collect the modem and even tried to charge me for the modem and threaten me to send me to collections when I refused to pay the charges when it was them who never showed up at appointment time to pick up the modem. Dunno why I didn't learn from my experience and wasted my time with them again. Good riddance!

GreatWhiteNorth said
So is there an obvious replacement to this card when the downgrade takes effect?

1) general use in Canada for best cash back on everything?

For no annual fee and cash back, I would go with either of:
(a) Hubert Financial Mastercard - 1% on everything (no caps/tiers) and 2% on gas (no caps/tiers);
(b) Mortgage Alliance Cash Back MasterCard from Collabria Financial Services - 1% on everything (no caps/tiers) and 2% on grocery (no caps/tiers);
(c) Walmart Rewards MasterCard - 1% on everything (no caps/tiers) and 1.25% on Walmart global purchases (no caps/tiers, as far as I'm aware);
(d) American Express SimplyCash credit card - 1.25% on everything
(e) Triangle World MasterCard - requires an invitation to be upgraded from Triangle MasterCard, so I would recommend applying by phone from Canadian Tire Bank and tell them you want an immediate upgrade to Triangle World or you're out; or,
(f) PC Financial World Elite MasterCard

I cannot recommend, in good conscience, any credit card with an annual fee or without an annual fee that does not offer at least 1.0% on "all other" purchases, including the Tangerine Money-Back Credit Card, which is a hard avoid.

2) International use outside USA (Home Trust might be it?) (seem to have some time to figure this one out 🙂 )  

Exactly. Home Trust Preferred Visa and Brim Financial MasterCard. Stack and Mogo are also options for prepaid cards, but why go down market to the prepaid card space when you have two great options? 😉

Cheers,
Doug

Nehpets said
I would caution to have reservations about credit cards administered by Collabria Financial Services, following my bad experience with a Meridian credit card administered by them.

The quality of customer service was about as poor as I have ever experienced with any credit card service in Canada or in the U.S., with poorly trained individuals who reply with boilerplate responses, because policies and practices vary from one issuer to another among the FI's they service.

At the time of my experience, in 2019, the rewards portion of the credit card was administered by a third party in the U.S. and not by Collabria, that required a separate login account. The delay between redemption and actually receiving the cashback was several weeks instead of days.

Most, if not all credit unions, seem to employ Collabria to administer their credit cards in Canada.

Stephen  

Hi Stephen,

Hoping you'll consider amending the above post in light of the information I can provide on that.

The Meridian Collabria cards are actually administered by Collabria, but the customer service is provided by Meridian Credit Union directly, or potentially by a service provider of Meridian as what you say is news to me, and funded entirely by Meridian. So, any bad customer service you received was from Meridian, or its service provider, and not Collabria. Essentially, Collabria provides only the systems and platform, for which Meridian pays Collabria some sort of fee or a percentage of the income it earns from the cards.

Indeed, all credit unions that previously used TD's CUETS Financial division (less one) have either (a) launched new branded Collabria cards funded jointly between them and Collabria, with existing branded cards remaining until cardholders close them but rebranded as CUETS Financial generic MasterCards or (b) purchased their portfolios back from CUETS Financial at either a slight premium or discount to the book value. I forget which one remained with CUETS Financial. Some credit unions that previously used Desjardins for their credit cards even switched to Collabria (i.e., Prospera Credit Union). Only Coast Capital Savings, as far as I can tell, remains with Desjardins. Coast Capital Savings is reviewing its credit card partner and, if they switch, it would likely to be Collabria. Vancity issues its own credit cards.

Most people I've spoken with absolutely love Collabria—their online platform is excellent, you can set up pre-authorized debits online, the customer service excellent, and the rewards are quite compelling. In fact, MBNA's portfolio has probably shrunk by more than half since TD bought it, and that's excluding the CUETS Financial losses.

Finally, Desjardins owns a significant controlling minority stake in Collabria, with two other U.S.-based credit unions holding the balance.

Edit: It was Taiwanese-Canadian Credit Union that was the sole remaining credit card to have their cards issued and owned by CUETS Financial. Given that in November 2019, TD's MBNA division rebranded all CUETS Financial Choice Rewards MasterCards as MBNA Choice Rewards MasterCards and completely phased out the last vestages of CUETS Financial, it's likely that Taiwanese-Canadian Credit Union's CUETS Financial MasterCards were included with that, and, as such, are no longer tied in any way to Taiwanese-Canadian Credit Union. In effect, it no longer has a MasterCard product of its "own" (even though it didn't own the MasterCard customers).

Cheers,
Doug

Nehpets said

Doug said
Hoping you'll consider amending the above post in light of the information I can provide on that.

There's nothing to amend since I'm reporting my first hand experience. If the arrangement with Meridian has changed since my bad experience then let someone with first hand experience report on their later experience.  

Hi Stephen,

I just meant for you to clarify that the issue is with Meridian, not Collabria. Your first-hand experience is helpful.

As to other experiences, the overwhelming majority opinion of Collabria on RedFlagDeals and even this message board is that Collabria is among the highest rated in terms of features, rewards, and customer service.

Thanks,
Doug

I got TD Cash Back Visa Infinite Card. It has a fee but it is going to be reimbursed. First 3 months 10% on everything. After the first 3 months (up to $2000), it will be 3% on gas, groceries and recurring bills. Earn 1% cash back on all other purchases.
Same 2.5% crap exchange fee as others.
I will keep using it for 11.5 months then cancel.

By then, I will shop for similar offers and CC.

I also got Brim. I haven't used it yet. No exchange fee. 1% interest on everything.

I am still not convinced that if you spend enough on miscellaneous purchases throughout the year that the Rogers World Elite Master Card isn't still the best value and most convenient if one doesn't want to be constantly juggling the use of different credit cards for gas, groceries, restaurants, etc. The fact that there is no annual fee and you get 1.5% back on everything, works well for me. If you spend enough on car repairs, vacations and home improvements the cash back really adds up. When we used to use Tangerine Master Card, the PC Master Card and Scotia Visa for all different reward purposes, my wife went crazy trying to keep the cards straight.

Although the Rogers card has diminished in value, there is something to be said for simplicity. I understand that some folks want to maximize the benefits of using different cards for different purchases, but, along with the benefits, there is a price to pay for doing so.

gicjunkie said
I am still not convinced that if you spend enough on miscellaneous purchases throughout the year that the Rogers World Elite Master Card isn't still the best value and most convenient if one doesn't want to be constantly juggling the use of different credit cards for gas, groceries, restaurants, etc. The fact that there is no annual fee and you get 1.5% back on everything, works well for me. If you spend enough on car repairs, vacations and home improvements the cash back really adds up. When we used to use Tangerine Master Card, the PC Master Card and Scotia Visa for all different reward purposes, my wife went crazy trying to keep the cards straight.  

I agree but if they are going to enforce the min 15K spending, then it will be downgraded to Rogers Platinum Mastercard with 1% on all eligible transactions. Plus, for many the main advantage was the foreign transactions points. I barely travel to the US or use USD. I am not willing to lose -1% or -1.5% on foreign currencies. This makes "Brim" a perfect replacements considering it is also 1% on all purchases but no 2.5% fees.

However, if it stays as World Elite MC, maybe the Car Rental CDW and the 10 consecutive days Travel Insurance would keep it an interesting choice regardless of the downgrades.